BS 1984
MS 1985 MIT Mechanical Engineering
Speaks Ukrainian.
Naval ROTC
Training in diving as salvage officer
De-stranded Exon Houston
Awarded Defense Superior Service Medal, 2 Legion of Merit, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and Meritorious Service Medal, 2 Navy Commendation Medals, 2 Navy Achievement Medals and other service medals according to her wikipedia bio.
That's a lot of awards. Either she's outstanding, or they're handing medals out like candy for every little thing she does, because she's a woman. Kidding.
Selected as astronaut candidate by NASA April 1996, performed various support duties. Flew aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis. Three EVAs.
Missioni Specialist Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Three EVAs.
Lost a tool bag to space. Tools burned in reentry. Estimated cost of loss $100,000 (probably a wrench, space wrench! and a screw driver who knows?) Cause of loss unknown.
Her specialty is salvaging.
Her specialty is salvaging.
It's just so odd, dropping, not so odd but popping up that fast does seem odd, then dropping again is odd, maybe, then popping up again that fast again is simply a marvel to behold of human physical endurance and cheerful persistence.
I've dropped. But I don't pop back up. That's what gets me about this. It takes a long moment to gather one's wits. The only time I popped right back up was when physically hit on the top of the head by the closing freight elevator door, a gate that rolls down heavily before two doors shut, from the top and the bottom like giant metal mouth. Operated manually, some careless someone was too fast on the button. And you go,
"Where am I?" and "What just now happened to me?" and "How did I get here?"
Just like on teevee.
And we never did hear about her U.F.Os.
11 comments:
I remember that loss of tools incident.
Boss the plane....
Bangkok, Oriental setting
And the city don't know what the city is getting
The creme de la creme of the chess world
In a show with everything but Yul Brynner
Time flies, doesn't seem a minute
Since the Tirolean Spa had the chess boys in it
All change, don't you know that when you
Play at this level, there's no ordinary venue
It's Iceland or the Philippines
Or Hastings or, or this place
One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble
Can't be too careful with your company
I can feel the Devil walking next to me
Siam's gonna be the witness
To the ultimate test of cerebral fitness
This grips me more than would
A muddy old river or Reclining Buddha
But thank God, I'm only watching the game, controlling it
You are a genius Chip
I tell you though, I could watch Quest for hors w/o any loss of enthusiasm.
He can grip w/o saying anything necessarily gripping.
"Its a carrier that's in transition"
Ok, Bangkok is in Thailand, not Malaysia.
Sue me.
Space wrench? Space wench.
As long as you've brought in the chess theme, the candidates match to find a challenger to new FIDE World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen is underway in Khanty-Mansysk.
The favorite, the Amenian Lev Aronian suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of former World Champion Vishy Anand in round one yesterday. It was the only decisive game.
Unfortunately no Americans qualified for this cycle.
It looks like Lev is winning his second round game as I type. So all is not lost for the favorite.
Heidimarie is a very good astronaut. A few times we had to work on ad-hoc EVA procedures for a potential repair. She was one of our go to Astronauts to help work out the procedures (think Gary Senise as Fred Haise in Apollo 13). She was also fairly well built, which you have to be to endure a 6 hour EVA.
She was also not the only one to loose a tool. That was actually somewhat common, particularly for those who had been on orbit for awhile and become accustomed to it. They just get very use to letting something go and it staying put. Of course, its very hard not to impart some vector force on it, but inside the vehicle it won't go far. So they do this outside the vehicle, and the tool floats away. This is why procedures are read up to the crew with such boring detail to remind them to connect tethers are properly store items.
They did simulations in water tanks, before going out there.
Still, I suppose something can only be choreographed to a certain extent and not beyond that.
Not every movement, down to say the timing of a breath, goes according to plan.
Ack, I was remembering Jerry Ross's tool loss. Heidimarie's was a bit different. She had an equipment failure in her tool bag, tried to clean up the mess, and while focused on cleaning the bag, she failed to secure it. So not the case of just letting go of the tool.
By the way, the NBL training has other flaws. For various reasons, there are times when the divers simply hand tools to the astronauts. Translation to locations is also tricky in the NBL. Sometimes astronauts are just positioned by divers. Sometimes they are positioned because the exercise is to determine what is the best position to conduct the work.
By the way, in the video, she looks dehydrated. If her blood pressure was low, then she would faint, get horizontal, blood would restore quickly, and yeah, she could pop back up. But then again, popping up to quickly would cause her to... faint again fairly quickly.
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